PuftWheat Invasion
by FigTreeofyourImagination
Summary: When Tails discovers that Sonic's house is suddenly devoid of breakfast cereal, the four inhabitants are thrown into an unhappy morning of conveniece shopping. What terrors lie ahead? Read on to find out.


Disclaimers: Sonic and his 'team' of wierdos all belong to the Sonic Team and Yuji Naka.

Everything else besides is mine.

A short I wrote for no particular reason. It's AU, in case you can't tell by the first few paragraphs. Takes place after 'Iron Maiden' but before 'Worth a Thousand Words.'

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PUFT-WHEAT INVASION

The Sunny Wing residential district was experiencing some wondrous weather. It was early May, with flowers blooming and the sky baby blue. A few wisps of white floated languidly on the horizon, but little else ventured to obscure the face of the sun on this beautiful day as it rose overtop the many perfect roofs.

Under one particular roof, a (dysfunctional) family of four was just starting their day, and weren't at all happy about it.

"Cereal! Cereal cereal cereal!" The chant shook the house from top to bottom, telling everyone else still sleeping that it was precisely half-past six in the morning.

Tails ran squealing about the kitchen table, still in his booted clown-speckled pyjamas. He had a set for every day of the week, and the clowns meant Saturday. A distant thump from back upstairs signified that the house king, Sonic the Hedgehog, had zombie-walked into his bedroom door from lack of being awake. Cursing blearily he unstuck his black nose from the wood of his door and yanked the slab of material wide open. His green eyes were ringed with red and ugly dark bags. He hadn't slept well, apparently.

As he shuffled out of his space-defying chamber in his too-big violet house robe, the door ricocheted off the wall from the force of the hog's yank, bounced in the opposite direction, and promptly smacked the mammal in the arse. Sonic stumbled forwards, sputtering stupidly as he flailed to keep his balance. He tumbled into the stair handrail, gripping it tightly as his brain fought with the reality that his bedroom door had just assaulted him.

"Cereal cereal cereal!" chanted the two-tailed freak from downstairs.

Sonic glared at nothing. "Grg," he said to himself. He released the rail and navigated to the main floor, looking anything but ready to face the first day of the weekend.

Tails' yowls had roused the other two inhabitants of the hog's house. Knuckles fell out of his room, still gripping the doorknob as he performed an admirable face plant into the second floor carpet. Shadow opened his door and yawned, scratched himself, and strutted down the hallway to the stairs. "Good morning, Knuckles," he greeted as he passed the half-conscious echidna, who seemed to have passed-out on the ground. "Good morning, sibling," he crowed cheerily at his fraternal twin as he entered the kitchen.

Sonic gave him a glare that would have made the entirety of the local annual flower-show spontaneously combust. "Shut. Up," was his return greeting.

Shadow just grinned, revelling in his brother's discomfort at being forced to get up before twelve. "Looks to me that you need to start going to bed a little earlier, sibling."

The blue hog twitched. "Shadow. I'm warning you now. Don't open your pit of a face for another four hours, or so help me I will--"

"CEREAL!" shouted Tails, flailing his limbs.

"Gah!" Sonic clutched at his ears. "Would you clamp it!"

"CEREAL! CEREAL CEREAL CEREAL!"

The azure being shrieked at the top of his lungs like a thing possessed, grabbing and ripping the overhead cabinet doors open to haul out a fish-monkey adorned kiddie bowl. He held it over his head with both hands, the cabinet door slowly swinging closed, still howling. Eyes wild he ran at the fridge, kicked the thing open, seized the milk, and slammed both down onto the kitchen table. The lid of the milk popped off, sending a small geyser of the dairy stuff shooting into the air and splashing back downwards. Sonic had now stopped screaming, breathing hard in his housecoat.

Tails wandered to the fridge and shut it.

Shadow hadn't moved throughout the entire ordeal. "Something tells me you need better stress management plans, sibling," he piped.

Sonic's scowl was so ugly the milk in his grasp threatened to curdle and turn itself green.

Knuckles had reached the last step of stairs and navigated himself into the doorframe with a small bang, still not quite awake.

Tails walked over to the under-counter cabinets and fished around for his cereal box.

"Sonic, if you keep that face for any longer it'll be stuck like that," chided the dark hedgehog.

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" bit the other. "Do that, would you?"

"Gurg," helloed the red echidna, falling into a vacant chair, narrowly missing and sending himself on a second trip to the very hard floor.

"EEEE!" shrieked the golden fox.

Everyone present cringed. "Tails! Shut up!" cursed the blue creature.

"There's no CEREAL!" he bawled ridiculously, holding up an empty cardboard box of sugared 'Giggle's Box-Case Loony-Bits'. He shoved it into his eternal babysitter's face to prove his point. "I WANT CEREAL!"

Sonic snatched the empty box from the freak's grasp with a whip of his skinny arm. "Then go get something else! Just shut up and eat! Or I'll put you outside and make you eat dirt!"

Tails just continued to bawl like a brat. Knuckles was drooling on the tablecloth, head cocked to one side as he snored in sleep. Shadow was smirking like a devil.

The first hog shot his twin a withering glare. "What are you smiling about, you ugly crab?" he interrogated. He shook the box at him. "Did you do this?" His frown deepened when the other didn't answer him. "Speak!"

Shadow snorted. "You just said you wanted me to 'shut up', so that's what I'm doing. Make up your mind."

Sonic crunched the cereal box in his hands as he growled viciously at the ceiling, snapping the sleeping echidna back into the world of real with a groan.

The other crossed his arms indifferently. "Honestly, sibling, you need to calm down. You're going to give yourself a hernia, and then you'll be twice as miserable than you usually are."

Knuckles blinked and scratched at his pointed head, yawning immensely. "It's not him that'll be more miserable," he commented, earning a piercing glance from his landlord.

The black and red creature snorted in laughter. "Anyway, I didn't touch that box, sibling. It's empty because it's empty." Knuckles had laid his head on the top of the table, trying to recapture the bliss of unconsciousness.

"I WANT CEREAL!" insisted the marvel of mother nature's badly planned experimentation.

"Eat a DIFFERENT ONE!" shouted the giant blue animal, bristling.

Tails just shrieked.

"Don't yell at him!" scolded Shadow.

"I'll do whatever I like!" retorted the other, waving his arms violently. "I'd like to see you do any better with this freak of nature hanging off of you twenty-four-seven!" Knuckles slid off the table and onto the floor with a distant crash.

The darker twin turned up his nose snobbishly. "Hmph," he said.

Sonic considered hurling the crumpled box at his infuriating brother, but did decided against it, because he wasn't in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. Tails was still screaming about cereal at his right, twin rivers streaming from his eyes. The scarlet echidna had woken up for the fourth time, and was crawling about the limited space between the chairs in hopes of finding some sort of cover from all the racket, since he was in no shape to attempt climbing the stairs back up to his dismal room. He eventually gave up and simply laid on the floor, his limbs entangled in the legs of the table chairs.

"Tails!" shrieked Sonic. "Stop screaming!" he demanded. "There's plenty else to have for breakfast! Now fill your face with food or I'll fill it for you!"

The two-tailed fox snivelled, and restarted his bawls. "I want CEREAL!"

Shadow made a clucking noise. "Why not just get him a new box of cereal?"

Sonic gave him a look that told him that he was treading on dangerous ground.

"CEREAL!"

"Knuckles!" shouted Sonic. The echidna snapped awake, head hitting the underside of the table loudly. "Is the convenience store open? Speak!"

Knuckles crawled for safety. "Yes!" he squeaked as he made desperately for cover.

"Then we're all going shopping!" he announced obnoxiously, arms in the air. Tails squealed in joy. Shadow scowled. Knuckles was shaking somewhere away from the kitchen.

Slightly more awake, the quartet was weaving through the aisles of the 'Happy Mart' super market, searching for a breakfast meal that would satisfy the two-tailed fox.

Tails, still in his pyjamas, was cavorting about ahead of the other three, squealing. Sonic was pushing a shopping cart that was taller than himself, his housecoat still draped over his shoulders and dragging on the ground. Knuckles looked like a relic out of 'Dawn of the Dead'. Shadow was pouting beside him, not happy at having been forced to accompany his poor-tempered twin on this new charade.

"Why didn't we go to the corner store?" yawned the echidna, drooling in half-sleep. His right eyelid refused to open any more than a third.

The bags under Sonic's eyes had gotten darker and his spines were bent out of shape. He just growled, making the other shoppers move out of the way of his cart as he came by.

"Because he didn't let someone who was actually _awake_ perform the travelling incantation," huffed Shadow, arms crossed.

Tails dove behind a far isle, squealing. A dull bumping noise signified he had leapt into some cardboard display. A slight continuation of whatever noise it was told them that the victimised display had been felled. The horrible expression on Sonic's face told everybody around the giant mammals that he didn't think Happy Mart was a very happy place. He wasn't making it very happy of a place, either.

The freak came crawling back towards the trio, dragging something behind him. It looked like a massive bag of coloured Styrofoam. All three wore confused looks as Tails hauled the over-huge package towards them. "I want this!" he shouted loudly at the blue hog.

Sonic just glared at nothing. He didn't move.

Everyone was still for a moment, Knuckles nodding off, until Shadow snapped his fingers under this twin's nose. Sonic snapped awake from whatever dark vision he had drowned himself in. "What, turd?" he interrogated angrily. He looked about in a mildly worried manner. "Wha?" He seemed to come to completely, and slouched. "Oh, yeah. The so-called 'Happy Mart'. Gods I hate this place."

"I WANT THIS!" restated Tails, clutching at the bag of stuff he had found.

The hog glared over what he had procured from the isles. The bag was made from a thin clear plastic, and written on it in big, red, bold, all-caps letters was 'PUFT-WEATTIES, BOWLS OF FAMILY FUN!'. The bag was filled with countless rice-shaped bits of fluffy cereal. His scowl deepened considerably. "No," he said. "Put it back." Tails snivelled as if he was going to cry.

"Why, sibling?" questioned Shadow, wanting very much to just get this nightmare of a trip over with. Any store that had easy-music showering from the ceilings like this one deserved to be burnt down and the remains salted, so that nothing would grow there again, and cursed on top of that for good measure.

"It pushes family values of torment," Sonic replied groggily. "I refuse to let something that reads 'bowls of family fun' into my house. It's disgusting."

Knuckles was sleeping on his feet, head cocked backwards, mouth open and his tongue lolling out in the air. Drool was seeping from his toothy cavern in streams.

"But… but I WANT IT!" screeched Tails.

"No," enforced the landlord.

Tails promptly released a torrent of tears.

This continued for a while, shoppers passing by giving them strange, disapproving looks. Sonic was scowling. Shadow was sulking. Tails was screaming. And Knuckles was lost to the world.

It wasn't for a fair while that Sonic finally snapped and bent to the two-tailed fox's cries. Snatching the massive bag of Puft-Wheatties into his possession he manoeuvred it into his cart. This proved to be a bit of a task, as the package of dried food was easily three times his height alone. How did humans stand having so much of one thing in their keep at one time? The reasoning behind this phenomenon eluded him. The bag smacked the dozing echidna on its way to the pathetically inadequate shopping cart. The scarlet mammal fell on his arse before waking up in a painful haze.

With the cart now much more cumbersome than before, Sonic struggled to get the thing to the check-out counter to pay for the obtrusive burden of breakfast material. Once there, he paid hastily and the four bade an even more hasty retreat.

After a few failed travelling chants, ending once on the roof of the nearest NASA test launch centre, they arrived on their front lawn. Or more precisely, in their front lawn. Due to a slight miscalculation, each of the four were buried up to their ankles in grass and dirt. Though Shadow ended up in the sad excuse of a flowerbed that haunted the space beneath the windowsills.

With clumps of dirt and stray sod clinging to their forms they shambled collectively into the blue hedgehog's abode, Tails skipping merrily ahead and preparing a cereal bowl in anticipation for his first meal of the day.

"That was a horrible trip, sibling," chided the black and red hog.

Sonic twitched, gripping the massive bag. "Shut up, dirt-monkey," he snarled. "I don't want to hear it."

"Cereal!" shouted Tails, unhappy that he wasn't getting his food delivered to him for his convenience.

"You should have let me handle the incantations!" chided Shadow snobbishly, ignoring the freak.

"Please!" retorted Sonic, also ignoring the fox. "It's your fault we had to go anywhere in the first place! If you had kept your filthy mouth shut then we wouldn't have had to go and get the snot this garbage!"

"Cereal!" insisted Tails.

"If I hadn't have said something you would have made Tails starve," pointed out the darker pf the twins. Knuckles had managed to fall asleep yet again, leaning on the door.

"At least until lunch," spat the blue hog.

Getting frustrated, and unsure why his squealings weren't working in his favour all of a sudden, the two-tailed fox abandoned his bowl and cutlery and took a run at the bag of Puft-Wheatties, wanting very much to get to the treat contained within.

Turning his head at the last second, Sonic saw the coming danger. However, he was too groggy to put a stop to what was bound to happen. He couldn't even let out a shout as the golden fox leapt and landed squarely on the bag.

As if in slow motion, the bag ballooned from the addition of Tails' weight. In a freak phenomenon of puft-wheat physics the energy of the fox's jump transferred to the compressed Wheatties en-masse. With a popping noise the plastic exploded.

In under a fraction of a second a tidal wave of dried cereal enveloped the entire interior of Sonic's house, burying all four of the inhabitants under many hundreds of feet and pounds of Puft-Weatties.

The house was silent.

On the second floor, where the cereal had managed to inch its way up the stairs to coat the carpet in a fine spray of the world's most useless dried foodstuff, a small rustling could be seen on the surface of the sea of Wheatties.

Gasping like sailors fighting the ocean, Shadow and Sonic burst from the invading material's depths, sending a shower of puft-wheat everywhere to stick to the walls.

Sonic waded to safety. "I will kill that fox someday…" he cursed under his breath. "Just see if I don't."

"Now, now, sibling," cautioned Shadow, who was fishing through the cereal, his arms buried in the stuff. "Don't get mad, it was an honest mistake." He hauled his hands out of the sea of breakfast goodness, dredging a very shaken echidna to the surface with them.

Knuckles flailed ridiculously and scrambled for the slightly less covered second floor carpet.

"Watch it, bug-breath!" shouted Sonic. "Don't step on them, you'll drive them into the rug!"

The scarlet echidna didn't give this order a whole lot of heed, but made for the higher ground as quickly as possible, mashing several of the Wheatties as he went. Tails was nowhere to be seen. "I nearly drowned from cereal!" shouted Knuckles hysterically, looking anything but stable. He threw his bloodshot gaze about and put his hands on his head. "They're everywhere!"

"Tell us something we don't know, you dolt," growled Sonic. Shadow waded over to sit with his fraternal twin and fellow permanent guest.

"What about Tails?!" shouted the red creature.

Sonic cringed from the unneeded volume of the other's voice. "Shut it, you pansy. Tails is probably fine."

"He could suffocate!"

"So?"

"'So'? He could die!"

Sonic just stared at him. "…So?"

Knuckles stared back. He would never get used to the nature of the Twins. "Someday, I'll get my own place. And then things will be normal," he told himself.

Sonic laughed genuinely and fell over.

The level of cereal shuddered for a moment, and then sank by a few inches.

"It seems as though Tails is enjoying his cereal," observed Shadow, picking stray Puft-Wheatties from his fur.

Sonic calmed down. "Twenty bucks says the freak finishes the whole lot by two."

Shadow tapped the underside of his nose. "I'll take that bet. I up you ten. Thirty, and Tails finishes by one-thirty."

"You're on."

Knuckles blinked dumbly. Nope, he would never understand how the Brothers' minds worked. But… He held up a hand. "Fifty says the Wheatties are cleaned up by three."

Sonic and Shadow passed the echidna a surprised look.

"I'll take you on that," said Sonic.

The trio sat on the carpet, watching the sea of cereal slowly sink downwards in jerks.

- fin.

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The dumbest ending known to man. Also the dumbest subject known to man. But it works. 


End file.
